Boys and Painting

It's hard to believe that Ronan is already 8 months old. He loves to climb and is even pulling himself up to standing now. The painful first tooth is also starting to cut it's way through. This has lead to lots of grumpy times and sleepless nights.

Levi has been having fun working with his dad on different projects. Here he is working on a bird house for the back yard.

I have been having fun playing around with some paint. This rose took me the better part of a week to finish. I forgot to take any pictures as I went along, but here is the finished piece. I must say that I am rather proud of it.

I also painted an ocean side scene for my dad's birthday. This one I'm not quite as happy with, but I did remember to take a few pictures as I was painting it.

4 theme parks in 5 days... with a 2 month old

Yes, we took our infant to 4 theme parks in 5 days... along with our 6 year old of course. Ronan turned 2 months old the day before visiting our first theme park. Here is his 2 month photo. He is 23.5 in long and weights 10 lbs 11 oz.

We found out a little less than a week before Matt's mother and sister visited, that they purchased tickets for everyone to visit Disneyland, California Adventure, SeaWorld, and Legoland during their visit. Here are a few highlights from the experience.

On Monday we went to California Adventure. We were very impressed with Levi's drawing of Piglet from the animation class.

On Tuesday we went to Disneyland. Here he is being trained as a Jedi Master.

As we were waiting for the evening parade, we were asked by one of the staff if we would like to have a better view of the parade. We were given a secret password and directed to the priority seating.

On Wednesday we took a break from the parks for Ronan to have his 2 month check up and shots. Then on to SeaWorld on Thursday. While the shows were good, there was no shade, so we were baking in the heat.

On Friday we went to Legoland. It was amazing to see everything built out of Legos.

Every night that week we only had 4-6 hours of sleep. Needless to say we are still recuperating from it all. Definitely a memorable week.

School and Moving

I finished another semester of school ... just in time to move to California! We are cutting it close by moving one week after my last final. Now it is time to change from studying to packing. Before I dive into all our moving preparations, here are some of the fun projects I got to do this semester thanks to my taking an intro to drawing class.

Mothers Day

For Mothers Day we had Levi paint a wood tissue box to give to my Mom.  The fun part was that she was here, along with my Dad, visiting.  So most of the fun of the present was watching him paint.  He did such a good job, none of the paint went any where near his mouth.

Family Photos

This year I wanted to send out Christmas cards with a family photo in it.  Because we can't pay to have someone take them for us I tried to take them myself.  Before I met Matt I did a bit of photography.  My graduation present was a nice camera of my fathers.  But I was more into the artistic side of it, rather than doing portraits.  

So doing family photos was a new experience for me. 

While it was fun throwing leaves up in the air to try and get Levi to smile and look towards the camera.  It was just too cold out, and too late in the day to spend the amount of time I wanted taking photos. 

 So we asked a family friend to try and take some for us.  He was so kind as to do it for free (thanks again to Ben for taking the time to do us this favor), but again the timing and weather was causing us problems.  So we had to move it indoors.

 In the end we did get some good photos, and it was difficult to decide what ones we wanted to use.  But over all it was a fun adventure for the Tandy family.